1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to transporting all terrain vehicles, and more particularly to racks for transporting all-terrain vehicles.
2. State of the Art
All-Terrain Vehicles (ATV's) are 3 or 4 wheeled vehicles designed for off road travel. Usually, an ATV must be transported to the location where it will be used off road. This means the ATV must be loaded onto transportation equipment, such as a trailer or pickup truck bed. Pick up truck beds are only big enough to handle a single ATV. Trailers can carry more than one ATV, but trailers restrict maneuverability of the towing vehicle, and such a trailer must be towed in tandem if a camp trailer is also being towed.
Transportation racks for carrying ATV's have been developed that fit in a pickup truck bed and create a deck above the pickup truck bed that is large enough to accommodate two ATV's. The deck is generally supported by posts that extend upwardly from a bottom rail that rest in the truck bed. The deck is supported by these posts. These racks have typically been made of heavy gage steel tubing to accommodate the weight of the ATV's. Most of these racks have been assembled as a single unit using permanent assembly techniques, such as welding, to accommodate the stresses induced in the joints of the rack by the weight of the ATV's and the stresses created by the ATV's on the rack during movement of the truck. A problem with these racks which are made as a single unit is that they are large (fit into the bed of a pick-up truck) and are very difficult and expensive to ship. Therefore, the business of making and selling these racks is essentially a local business selling only to local customers or other customers who can drive their trucks to pick up the rack.
Attempts have been made by the inventor to modularize a rack for carrying ATV's above pickup truck beds to allow for shipping of such racks to distant customers. However, to maintain the strength and stability of such racks, the racks have been broken down into only several large welded components that are then bolted together. An important part of the rack is the deck on which the ATV's are actually supported. The integrity of this deck provides integrity to the entire rack. To maintain the deck and entire rack integrity, the inventor's prior art modular rack included two large welded rectangular deck frame pieces which were bolted to vertical frame pieces providing the upwardly extending posts. Three deck plates were then attached to the deck frame. The large rectangular deck frame pieces established the size of the shipping container needed to ship the rack components to a purchaser. With the large rectangular deck frame pieces, the inventor needed a large wooden crate, that when packed with the rack components, weighed over 400 pounds. While this made shipping possible, it was still very difficult and expensive to ship the rack components. The shipping of this heavy wooden crate usually cost between $250.00 and $350.00. This shipping cost is added to the cost of the rack itself and decreases the competitiveness of the rack in comparison to locally made racks.